[Fandrew]

Originally Posted by RubberChipmunk

I would recommend Finnegan's Wake by James Joyce. I have recently begun my trek through this work, and cannot help but be entertained by every single page. The lack of any form of linear storyline, the inconsistent character development, and the creative usage of portmanteau and foreign words seem to present a nearly infinite number of ways to interpret any particular passage.

Forgive me, but those are three things I prefer to have in something I'm reading.

[RubberChipmunk]

Originally Posted by JayCarrFan

Forgive me, but those are three things I prefer to have in something I'm reading.

As do I, normally. However, Joyce decided that every other book follows those rules, and sought to create a work that broke them. His intent was to create an account of the night-time thoughts of man, a literary dream-state. I believe that those who read have more active imaginations than those who do not. When I read, I find my thoughts tend to become visual accounts of the words on the page; I am able to envision the story in my mind, to create the characters in my head based on their descriptions on the pages, to create and enact the scenes with nothing more than a few strokes of the pen as inspiration. The fact that Finnegan's Wake lacks such things as a storyline creates a written environment that can cause the mind to envision rather interesting things. From what I understand, there are many groups of people that gather, select a single passage, and discuss the differences between everyone's interpretations of the meanings. These interpretations can vary greatly from person to person. I have read accounts of people interpreting identical passages to be anything from a scene at a museum, a war, a sexual encounter, or even basic theories of nuclear physics. Give it a try, you might enjoy it.

[thelitguy]

Finnegan's Wake can really be an enjoyable read. I spent 9 months of solid reading to get through it, but it really was a treat (I also consider it the reason I got a perfect score on my ACT Reading and Language). I would say read Ulysses by Joyce first, and continue if you were interested in his writing. Also, I would check out the Skeleton Key by Joseph Campbell, with it being the definitive reading guide to this beast.

My three additions:

The Corrections by Jonathon Franzen. The best book of the past 25 years. I hardly ever read modern literature, but this totally captivated me.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf by Edward Albee. Exploring the world of absurd theater, this play is the best way to start. It reads surprisingly well, compared to Stoppard or Beckett.

Lolita by Vladmir Nabakov. This is the most beautiful book in the English language, hands down.

[SccHarpGirl]

A few that I enjoy, in no particular order

Les Miserables
The Count of Monte Cristo
Crime and Punishment
Fahrenheit 451
The Merchant of Venice (I figured you should probably have some Shakespeare in there if you're doing classics, and this is my favorite)
Catch-22
The Screwtape Letters
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (I know this isn't a classic. But it could very well become one in the future. Beautifully written).

I'm sure I will think of more, those are just some of my favorites that come to mind right away.

[Ivalice]

I'm a big fan of the Romantics, that should come out in the list.

The Scarlet Pimpernel
The Three Musketeers
Ivanhoe

[meatfinger]

Gatsby for sure. Perfect for... July, probably.

Can't ignore Hemingway. I suggest The Sun Also Rises.

If you like weird plays, read Beckett's Waiting For Godot. Wonderfully bizarre.

[Jeffrey]

I'll be blunt: if it's younger than 200 years, it has no business being called a "classic." One doesn't need to have read Hemingway or Fitzgerald or even my beloved Lovecraft to understand modern society. These books were added to reading lists because Lit. majors had elected to read them instead of the true classics, and then were at a loss to teach Homer and Sophocles.

Hence why The Crying of Lot 49, one of my top ten books, is now wasting space in public school reading lists. What a waste.

I'd argue that the literature destined to be American classics (Poe, Moby ☺☺☺☺, Uncle's Tom Cabin) suffer when read if one doesn't know her Scripture and Classical literature.

I'd recommend:

The Epic of Gilgamesh, rendered by David Ferry (not translated, since he doesn't read Akkadian or Hittite. However, he consulted a vast number of scholarly versions and produced a decent translation, if one that loses out on cadence)

The Tale of Sinuhe and The Tale of Eloquent Peasant. Non-mythological narrative fiction starts with the Egyptians. Oxford has a cheap collection of Egyptian prose and poetry. I recommend these two tales. They give great perspective not only on the roots of narrative in Western literature, but on pre-Greek and pre-Biblical writing.

The Iliad & The Odyssey by Homer. So many translations. Pick the one that fits you best. I recommend more modern versions. The 1700's and 1800's gave us many wonderful exercises in English that are good, and generally faithful, but are not Homer. You will be a better person by the time you finish these, I guarantee it.

Genesis through Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel, Psalms, Ecclesiastes, Isaiah and Daniel, read as poetry. I consider no one able to understand modern Western literature if they have not faithfully read these books. Whether one takes them as true or not, they are stunning exercises in ancient literature. Heck, Richard Dawkins thinks that public schools ought to teach them (but just as literature, and just to show the foundation of Western thought).

Antigone by Sophocles. We all know the Oedipus cycle. Read Oedipus Rex if you must, but Antigone is better by far.

The Trojan Women by Euripides. Following Sophocles, Euripides turned a spotlight on women of mythology. Stunning.

At least Books 1-2, 4, and 6 of The Aeneid of Virgil. I recommend David West's prose translation. Rather than try to fit the epic meter to blank verse, West gives a faithful translation of the Latin yet manages to keep the beauty.

Books 5 & 9 of Ovid's Metamorphoses. The silver-tongued Roman poet Ovid transforms the Greek stories of Persephone and Hercules. A must read to truly known Classical mythology.

True History by Lucian. An Assyrian-Roman, Lucian wrote two centuries after Christ and lampooned pretty much everyone. True History mocks Homer and is proto-science-fiction (part of it takes place off-planet!). Also, read Charon, where the ferryman of the dead and Hermes discuss the fates of famous figures. Very cynical! Lucian is a master. Mark Twain and Oscar Wilde are but echoes (though good ones!).

The Poetic Eddas. Understand Norse mythology with these bawdy tales of gods and giants.

Beowulf. I recommend Seamus Heaney's translation.

From there, move on to: the Canterbury Tales; One Thousand and One Nights; The Song of Roland; Everyman; Le Morte d'Arthur; Pilgrim's Progress; Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Merchant of Venice, A Midsummer's Night Dream, Julius Caesar and Othello; Don Quixote.

And that just scratches the surface of the Western narrative classics.